Like father, Like daughter?

Hopefully, not.  The promises we choose to keep are important ones.  One particular promise lingers in my memory.  In my childlike hope, I made a very specific promise to myself, and to my father.

Is it possible to feel less educated after achieving a degree?  Dedicating myself to education certainly has its ups and downs, but Sometimes I am convinced I’ve failed.  Overwhelmed and outnumbered by concepts and numbers and equations that appear inapplicable to my life.  Many hours of brain cells spent on drinking caffeine and wishing to understand theoretical theory as applied to the philosophy of music education. 

Once in awhile, there is inquiry and discovery as to the origin of my musical propensity.  I would like to say it derives from both parents, equal in musical knowledge and as brilliant educators.  The following question always enters my mind in consideration of parental relationships:  Are you most like mother or father?  For me, it’s my father- and this horrifies me more than you can imagine.

Absent for so many years due to my own will to kick his ass out of my life, once in awhile he manages to reappear.  He is brimming with interest in his sudden discovery in personal commonalities: our shared passion for musical knowledge, dry sarcasm, and realistic view of the world.  “I know you”, he says, wanting another chance.  Somewhere between 12 years, two new daughters, a missed daughter's wedding, and a girl lost in the middle, he decided he felt like building a bridge. 

Too bad he was too late.

 I’m still trying to find my escape from the gravity of the word daughter he uses to describe me.  In fact, I never heard such a label until I refused to acknowledge it.  I've been a disappointment, a shadow, an enigma, the bookworm, the awkward inarticulate bore of a child.  And at this point I thought, why should he take interest now?

I remember one day when I was four years old.  We were in the car, and he was driving while chain smoking cigarettes with closed windows (as usual).  He asked me who I wanted to be when I grew up.  That was when I boldly informed him I would never be like him.  That I would not make his choices, refusing to repeat his history.  Miserable, destroying my dreams and those I claim I love.  I told him I would not be him when I grew up. 

He chuckled. Flicked his cigarette through a crack in the window.  And said, “You just wait.”
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